These stats spell out huge opportunities for marketers, but some old tactics no longer work. Sending out large email “blasts” to huge subscriber lists is no longer resulting in high open rates. List decay is increasing. A large list doesn’t translate to results. The average open rate for branded emails is a mere 20-40%, and the click-through rate is even less.
That’s why it is important to have a Privacy Policy and Terms of Use readily available on your site, and even a disclaimer before they sign up for anything. Not only is this good business practice, it’s also required by Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter … pretty much every major company whose services you will be using to promote your business. Oh, and it is required by most governments.
This is especially effective of course if the content you’re sharing is relevant to your own business, and if you’re sharing it to or with a group of your target audience. If you share highly relevant content on Facebook and your target audience clicks on it from your Snip.ly link, chances are they’ll also be interested in your content and opt-in offers. Use Snip.ly to add calls to action to all of the relevant content you share.
Most of the how-to articles you read about list building strategies are actually talking about specific list building tactics. You know, like how to use SEO to drive traffic, how to use a specific type of squeeze page, or how to guest post. These are all specific actions you can take to get more traffic and subscribers, but they don’t constitute an overarching strategy.
Thank you for your comments RJ :) One thing just always sticks in my head and that is a comment made by highly reputable marketer. He basically had built up a sizeable list in Aweber and then because of a failed payment Aweber locked him out and he was unable to retrieve his leads. I think it is common knowledge that Aweber are not keen on biz ops etc . Can anyone else comment on this too? I know when I was actively promoting EN, EN reported that Aweber are not that keen on MLM etc so Get response was their new solution.
There is hardly anyone who doesn’t get excited at the prospect of winning something without making an effort and that too, for free. And if subscribing and giving my email is all it takes, I, for one, am going to participate! Think about it. If a landing page asks you for your email address, why would you give it, unless it was going to give you something in exchange?
Just because your email list is an online marketing tool, it doesn't mean that you only have to solicit emails online! If you have a retail location, you can collect emails when customers purchase or visit the store or other location. If you market by attending festivals or concerts, you can collect emails at those locations. Offering to raffle off a prize but requiring an email on the raffle ticket can also be an effective way to grow your email list. Of course, you'll have to dedicate the time to retyping all of the emails that you collect into your system, but it's often worth it. Don't overlook offline opportunities to grow your email list.

A/B Test – One of the benefits of using GetResponse is that you can split test your subject lines i.e. send 25% of your mailing list a version of your newsletter with one subject line and 25% a version with another subject line. You can then compare which subject line is more effective and send the remaining 50% of your list the best performing version.

All I know is that I have been pulled in every direction by shiny object syndrome chasing a lot of these ideas. Now is the time to step back and see what is in place and focus on things that are working. Or I can just do what Dean Holland suggested and start from list building basics until I can see a way to leverage the things that I have already done and tools I have bought.
Wow – now this is an exhaustive list of enough reasons to NOT fail when generating ideas to build your list. I particularly like the idea of hosting a JV giveaway as you can leverage different audiences and the cost is minimal for the exposure (providing you team up with a blogger who has an engaged audience). Guest posting is an interesting one as I believe to get more audience back to your page and build credibility, you really need to guest post on sites which have a loyal audience that engages with the author e.g. Adriennesmith.net or firepolemarketing.com . Great job with the post Ana 🙂

That’s why it is important to have a Privacy Policy and Terms of Use readily available on your site, and even a disclaimer before they sign up for anything. Not only is this good business practice, it’s also required by Google, Amazon, Facebook, Twitter … pretty much every major company whose services you will be using to promote your business. Oh, and it is required by most governments.

If you decided that you want to buy 2,512,596 visitors, it would cost you $125,629.80 if you paid 5 cents a visitor. If you bought 41,142 links from a service like Sponsored Reviews at a rate of $20 a link, you would have spent $822,840. And that wouldn’t even give you high quality links. We naturally got our links from sites like Huffington Post and Forbes.”
For example, Crew, a company who matches companies with hand-picked freelancers, offers a number of different side projects to their customers, including things like a calculator to help people figure out the cost of an app they want develop, a collection of free stock photos, and a list of what they call ‘unicorn’ coffee shops to work from that have the ultimate combination of working perfection: good coffee, good wifi, and plenty of outlet plugs.
My traffic model looks like a complicated shambles. I use a number of Social Media platforms, mostly Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn, with several profiles in each. I have some sizeable followings in niche areas, like Bitcoin and Affiliate Marketing. I have a bunch of tools that automate the flow of content. I know it is a shambles because it is not producing consistent subscriber or sales results. The only thing that works well is my charity fund raising. Weird that as I can get people to give money away more easily than I can get them to buy something of tangible value to them. Now there is a big lesson in there for me. 49% of my donations by number come from former colleagues. These are people that I know and who have grown to know, like and trust me.
Hi Crispian. Yes I have heard of GVO. But I personally use GetResponse. I think all email mnagement systems e.g Aweber, GetResponse, GVO, MailChimp etc allow you to do the same thing, to automate your business by sending a series of pre-loaded emails to create a relationship with your list, provide value to them and of cause promote some products to them so you can make some money. So I'd say choose the one that is appealing to you, learn how to use it and stick with it as long as you want to.
Give it a try. Every optin list provider gives a set of code to paste into your website. You can paste it anywhere you like. I put it on my contact page and on the end of most posts. They call the code a trip wire because you can scatter the code throughout your website to encourage people to sign in. When using visual editing I usually type 3 *** where I want to insert the code. Then I go to text edit find and remove the *** and replace it with the sign in code.
It used to be you would have only one lead magnet on your site and that was sufficient. However, today your content and nurture sequence need to be highly relevant to the exact solution the person is actively looking for. By creating a content upgrade that is specific to a highly-targeted piece of content that is getting lots of attention helps you to raise that relevancy and turn more visitors into email subscribers.”
SendGrid helps you focus on your business without the cost and complexity of owning and maintaining an email infrastructure. We help with all technical details (from domain authentication to DKIM) and offer world-class deliverability expertise to help your emails reach the inbox. And with a full-featured marketing email service that offers a flexible workflow, effortless list segmentation, and actionable analytics, all of your email needs are met in one reliable platform.
Now that you’re all set up to starting collecting emails, the fun part begins (when I say ‘fun’, I actually mean ‘hard’). If your site receives a good amount of traffic and you have a truly compelling offer, this shouldn’t be too difficult. However, if you’re like most business owners, you’ll need to look outside your own audience to start building your list.
Giants like Google, Amazon, and Facebook have imposed countless rules that limit what you can and can’t do to promote your business. If you repeat content, you’re in trouble. If you “keyword stuff,” you’re in trouble. If you backlink to shady sources, you’re in trouble. If you violate their rules, they penalize you by not displaying your content, moving you down on their results, or banning you entirely.
You can’t begin to personalize your campaigns if all you have is an email address, so work to figure out what data you already have. Do you have information on past purchase behavior, length of time on your email list, customer status, or geography? All of these areas can be leveraged for personalization, which will, in turn, improve list quality. Where does this information live? Is it in your CRM, e-commerce platform, or somewhere else? Integrations can help you combine your email list with outside information.
If that’s not enough to convince you to toss interstitials in the bin and never look back, there’s also the fact that users report these interactions as among their most-hated advertising practices (defined as ‘modals’ in this study by the Nielsen Norman Group). On a one to seven scale, modals (interstitials) landed at 5.82 for desktop users and 5.89 for mobile users, beating even autoplaying videos without skip for most-dreaded advertising type.
Of course, getting people to read your content is not what this blog post is about – it’s about getting people to join your email list. Because of this, let’s focus on ways you can build your email list, when it comes to your own blog. It is important that you have all of the above down before you start promoting your content, or else your efforts might be in vain.
It’s a best practice to ask the referrer not only for a friend’s email address, but also for a full name so that the message is personalized. Most important, remember to add the referee’s full name to the email as well. By referencing whom the email content was recommended by, you gain instant credibility and will attain much higher conversion rates.